News
Making 'Twilight' Fever Payoff
By Robert Marich
Nov 25, 2009 – Advertising Age columnist Simon Dumenco examines the outlook for the Twilight series and the teen girl sensation it ignited, as the second of four movies (The Twilight Saga: Full Moon) from this franchise opened to a gargantuan $142.8 million in first first three-day weekend.
“Global stats on the vast Twilight licensing business are hard to come by, but all indications are that sales of tie-in products (including clothing, jewelry, board games, dolls, make-up, etc.) are stratospheric, with the Times of London estimating licensed-merch sales revenue of $166 million in the U.K. alone,” Dumenco writes. “With a sequel, Eclipse, due out this summer, we're looking at a billion-dollar franchise from just the movies alone.”
Summit Entertainment distributes the romantic drama that adds vampire characters for spice and has captivated teenage girls. The movies are based on Stephenie Meyer's novels that have sold 70 million books worldwide.
Dumenco conducts a Q&A with Matthew Rettenmund, editor and founder of Popstar! magazine to get the lowdown on Twilight and the teen/tweens/youth markets. Here are some excerpts:
Dumenco: You know, I went to a play last week, and I had time to kill because I got there early, so I went into this 99-cent store next door. There was all this High School Musical merchandise (Disney’s TV program) on sale. Funny to be reminded how quickly audiences move on. Teen audiences, adult audiences, every audience.
Rettenmund: Right now, with Twilight, it's the franchise that is big. The stars' need to make that popularity rub off on them so that they can carry it on into new and different roles. Franchises can't change as easily as actors, so franchises usually wind up being discounted goods eventually. Though a literary series such as Twilight has a great chance, like Harry Potter, of standing the test of time.
Dumenco: When did you realize Twilight would be huge?
Rettenmund: Twilight was a hard one to see coming. Popstar was pitched a set visit to Twilight, and we were unsure -- it is certainly very edgy and sensual compared to everything else in our magazine. But a persistent publicist pointed out that all of the cast, mostly unknowns, were ranking super high on Yahoo searches, so we took a chance. We were the only teen-entertainment magazine on that set. We ran an introductory spread months before it came out and by the time it was released we were confident it would be gigantic. After we decided it would be big, we were not at all surprised at just how big it got. Love stories never go out of style.
Rettenmund: It's amazing and strange how tween pop-culture is consumed by adults. There are so many unashamed adults who love Twilight and who swoon over 17-year-old Taylor Lautner.
Dumenco: And Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart [Bella of the Twilight series, caught in a love triangle of sorts with Pattinson's Edward and Lautner's Jacob] show up on the cover of the celeb weeklies. And Lautner's reportedly been shot for the cover of Rolling Stone.
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